INTELLECTUALS, reason & al.

[kenneth.mackendrick]

Jim and Ralph,

There is a danger in some of the implications that have been raised here - the 
relentless knocking down of the ivory tower....  I DO NOT think that either of you 
have done this - I simply want to point out one possible danger of such a stance 
which arises in relation to liberation theology.

Liberation theology, via Leonardo and Clodovis Boff, Gustavo Gutierrez, or Paulo 
Freire, argues that one must give theoretical and practice privilege to the poor.  
What this accomplishes logically is the the justification and perpetuation of the 
system which creates and sustains poverty!  Since "the poor" or "the working 
class" are interpreted to have greater insight into human suffering - they are 
epistemologically given superior status in terms of decision making and policy 
generation.  So the rational conclusion, since poverty becomes a position of 
privilege, is that the system which generates poverty MUST be maintained.  Now 
this is not what Gutierrez and friends are fighting for - but theoretically they have 
written a powerful critique of one ideology and simply replaced it with another 
(ideology in the marxian sense).

Ralph has clearly defended himself against my accusation that he was simply a 
pragmatist - and offered up the idea that he is relentlessly engaged in 
"top-of-the-line" intellectual pursuits - despite their self-involvement.  However I am 
worried here about Jim's recent comments.

> 	"No -- it is Dumain who is quite right here, and the intellectual pseuds
> such as yourself who are QUITE WRONG. And you **MUST** be wrong, as your
> reply shows that you SIMPLY DID NOT GRASP WHAT MR. DUMAIN WAS 
*CLEARLY* DRIVING AT."

MUST be wrong?  Is this out of context or have all of the ivory tower discourse 
masterbators just been written off (BTW - I'm not exactly sure why masterbation is 
a bad thing here....).

> 	Anyway; it has become ABUNDANTLY clear to me over the past year or 
>two, reading the comings and goings of the university academician,
> ivory-tower, ivy-league, post-marxish/modern, tweedy, bookish,
> NON-INVOLVED, 'objective' OBSERVERS/VOYEURS among you, that academic
> 'marxism' (so-called) has developed a veritable INFESTATION of
> intellectual parasites, such has seldom been seen before in human
> history."

Email is certainly not an appropriate medium for conveying exactly how one is 
engaged.  As a matter of fact - none of us have any idea how others conduct or live 
their lives.  I especially take offence to the accusation of being NON-INVOLVED.  
Bottom line - you have no idea.  You simply have no idea how most of us live our 
lives.

 My understanding of similar past episodes is that there was a
> Karl Marx once who could separate the pseuds from the REAL
> thinkers/doers, and then an Engels, and then a Lenin and a Trotsky...

Yes - and it seems to me that Marx's wife, someone who seems to have had an 
even greater ability to discern the thinkers/doers than the master himself, once 
wondered when Karl was going to stop drinking in the streets and do his share of 
the cooking and cleaning.

> But *TODAY*!! *NO ONE* speaks with such authority in the marxist
> intellectual universe, and it has thus quickly become over-populated and
> over-grown with the worst sorts of intellectual hucksters and
> charlatans...

Andrea Nye?  Noam Chomsky?  Agnes Heller?  Murray Bookchin?  whoops - sorry - 
too ivory tower.  Does time in jail give lend itself to the necessary credentials for 
anti-establishmentarianism?

> What they perhaps forget MOST of all is the sacrifice many of us have
> made in not pursuing a university career at the expense of removing
> ourselves from the working class. WE know IMPORTANT things which YOU
> don't... What a fucking crying shame that a 'Two Solitudes' situation
> has arisen inside marxism -- to the near-eternal detriment of the world
> socialist movement...

This is my point.  Poverty is EVIL BECAUSE IT DESTROYS.  Liberation maintains 
that "we can worhip god even if we are poor."  THIS IS BULLSHIT!!!  When you are 
too tired to walk to the church, to hungry to think, too overworked to communicate - 
you cannot worship.  Power corrupts equally - the tendency to assimilate, ignore, 
and dispatch orders instead of having a conversation - neither the working class 
nor the ivory towers are an appropriate place to theorize.  "Right thoughts in the 
wrong world are impossible."
> 
> 	Q: If youse guys are SO learned, why can't youse figger out how to
> swallow your false pride and reach out to working class people and give
> them the benefit of your 'erudition'?? And don't tell me you give
> 'courses' and 'seminars', so what's the Big Deal -- as that would be the
> WRONG answer and I'd *fail you* on it in a test...

A seminar no.  A conversation with the capacity to make good on the consensual 
decisions through the use of communicative power - YES.  Let's talk about law - or 
anarchy - and stop quibbling about whose "necessary perspective" is being left 
out.  If you're on this list - your in.  An email list does not have the capacity to do 
the things you are concerned with.  The banking system is left intact as are 
speculative non-taxed stock exchanges.  The revolution will not be digitalized - 
although such computeralization plays its part.  And as far as I can see NO ONE on 
this list has shouted great hurrah's about a university education - an oxymoron in 
most instances - although a few have hinted that it has helped them (did it help 
marx? emma goldman? che? zetkin? kollontai?).

disenchantedly yours,
ken